


Port Royal

by Ithika



Series: Remorseless [10]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, I actually don't want him to die at all these fics just keep happening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 07:15:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5776501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ithika/pseuds/Ithika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imprisoned for over a year after capture, Charles Vane has a visitor he had long expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Port Royal

He had known she would come to him. **  
**

It had taken far longer than he’d expected; long enough that he lost count of the endless exchange of day and night, long enough that he knew he could not fight his way free any longer, though he knew that wouldn’t be her purpose.

But she had come.

He stood as tall and proud as he ever had before her, refusing to let the chains he bore stoop him. She held herself rigid and defiant in her fine, heavy dress, the skirts of it failing to hide the swell of her belly. They are silent, the two of them, for quite some time. It’s Charles who speaks first, his rough voice made rougher with disuse and dehydration.

“Was it what you thought it would be?”

There it is; the outrage, challenge, defiance. There **she** is, and he smiles, just a little, as she answers. “No.”

Charles nods. He knew it wouldn’t be. But then, he’d learned harder lessons than she had about the truth, and earlier. _Until now_ , he supposed. “Is it what you wanted? Nassau, your beloved sand and stones?” There’s no malice in his question - there’s no need for that now. No point to it.

Eleanor raises her chin, breathes in sharply through her nose. He knows what she’s remembering - the same moment as he.

_Another day, another week, another month. A lifetime._

This time, her voice is soft, an almost fragile thing. “No.”

He grunts at that, unsurprised. Eyes still bright and proud drift to that bump she seemed to want to hide from him, settling there for a time before his lips twist into what could almost have been a smirk, did she not know him better. There is something like regret in both of them, if only for a moment, a heartbeat, and then it is gone.

He didn’t expect an answer to his next question, but he asks it anyway, lurid leonine eyes locking with her deeper blue. “Does he love you?” He doesn’t ask the **other** question - he didn’t want to know; just as he hadn’t wanted to know if she’d felt it for him, back then. He thought he knew the answer now to both questions.

The response she gives him is a surprise, even if she doesn’t answer, as expected. She closes the distance between them, and as their bodies touch the difference between them has never been so stark. There’s a softness to her, in her fine lady’s clothes and with her silent, growing passenger. The hardness now was only in her eyes, and even they were softer, pleading. He’s softer, too - he knows it. Mouldering bread and dirty water will do that to a man, and Vane’s bracers sit looser around forearms than they ever have before. But his eyes, like hers, are the same, always. “Give them the coordinates.”

He barks a laugh, but he doesn’t step away, his lip curling over teeth as he replies. “You would have me give them the last part of me.” Fine blonde brows draw together, uncomprehending, and he continues. “The one thing they cannot take. They’ve taken everything else - or haven’t you noticed?”

“Flint? Rackham? _Teach_? You would protect them to your own death? They won’t come for you.” She’s incredulous, her old fire showing in the way her voice barely crackles with irritation at his stubbornness. “They’ll _hang_ you, Charles.”

This time it is a sneer, as he repeats the words he hadn’t heard from her own lips, but knew beyond all possible doubt were hers. “As long as he is alive, you cannot succeed.”

She recoils as if he’d struck her, and perhaps once he would have. Those still, sharp eyes watch with shocked fascination as tears gather in hers, only to be wiped away angrily mere seconds later. “You stubborn fool.”

“I won’t give them a **word**. Not a _name_ , not a _letter_. I know what _I_ am. And I’ll be it to the end. **My own**. Nobody can take that from me.” He’s still and unchanging as the stone, now, and for a moment he looks his old self in the guttering torchlight: strong, powerful, indomitable.

“Charles, I’m–”

He stops her before she can finish with a raised finger and a shake of his head. “That won’t do either of us any good now.”

She nods once, that iron that he’d always loved returning to her features as she closes the space between them again, taking his face in her hands and kissing him like she used to. For his part, he returns the kiss, his fingers working into her hair despite the severe style it had been pulled up into, though for once it’s him that breaks it, a thumb running over her cheekbone as he says the words he’d only ever dreamed before.

“I loved you. And you destroyed me.”

To her credit, she nods, accepting that truth and not shying from it, her hands clutching at his wasted wrists. Finally, she relents, breaking eye contact with him with a sigh that carries the weight of all she’s done. “I know.”

He’s silent, and it seems he’s said all he has to say to her. Certainly, she turns as if to go, and he stops her with her name.

“Eleanor.” When she turns back, he can’t help but be all but overcome by all the could-have-beens that were caught for that moment in her eyes, like so many dew-drops on spider’s silk in the dawn. “Don’t stop fighting for her. You won’t be happy if you do. You are too much like me to abide anything less.” _Fight to the death,_ he’s telling her. _Fight till all you have left is your will to keep fighting._

The smile she awards him is tiny, almost absent, and yet somehow more genuine than any dozen he’d seen of hers before now. “You’re better than any of them. I know that now.” Too late, say her sad blue eyes, and he nods with the shade of a smile.

“Goodbye, Eleanor.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> So history says Vane was imprisoned for ages after being captured and it's the worst, the whole thing is the worst. I'll never be ready for it but these fics are probably an attempt to mitigate the weeks of weeping that are going to happen when IT happens. Which hopefully won't be for YEARS because Long Live Charles Vane


End file.
